With the proliferation of communications networks, and in particular, communications networks implemented in whole or in part over wireless media, data security has become increasingly important. Wireless networking technologies are relatively new compared to wired networking technologies. As such, current techniques for securing wireless networks have been derived from the techniques developed for and used in wired networks. For example, one technique for securing a network, whether wired or wireless, is to encrypt the communications. This inhibits comprehension of the communications by an unauthorized party should the network be compromised. Current encryption techniques are satisfactory for direct wired network paths, which include no intermediate wireless portions. To compromise encrypted transmission, an attacker typically needs to listen to multiple transactions in order to break the encryption algorithm. For example, in order for an outside party to gain access to a transaction over direct cable connections, the outside party may gain access to the wire or to a server coupled therewith and closely monitor data streams until the outside party can determine when one transaction has been received or transmitted by the server. Alternatively, the outside party may try to access the data contained on the server, such as any secure databases stored thereon. Once accessed, and enough data is gathered, the attacker may be able decrypt the data. Techniques are known for protecting data stored on a server and the relative inaccessibility of the wired media makes accessing and intercepting wired communication inherently difficult. However, when transmitting communications wirelessly, the wireless signals carrying the communications are often broadcast omni-directionally, thereby making them accessible to anyone within range who cares to listen. Accordingly, techniques implemented to protect a transaction at the server, or over the communications media, from attacks, do little to protect transactions traveling at least partially over wireless networks, where the data cannot be protected by the server and the wireless signal cannot be securely constrained. When a transaction travels at least partially over wireless networks, anyone may attempt to intercept the data stream. This increases the probability that a given encryption algorithm will be compromised by an attacker.
In any transaction using wireless networks, one of the main concerns is the ability of an outside party to intercept a transaction and decrypt the transaction, where it has been encrypted for protection, to obtain personal and/or secure information such as credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and social security numbers. Therefore, it is desirable to protect wireless transactions to prohibit an outside party from intercepting and decrypting transactions.